


Failures in Flight and Fluency

by goldgunsgirls



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Crash Landing, F/F, Gen, Language Barrier, Prompt Challenge, Stranded, Universal translator breaks, you could theoretically interpret this one as brotp but don't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 23:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldgunsgirls/pseuds/goldgunsgirls
Summary: 'Jadzia slowly blinked up at her.“Huh?”She guessed she must have hit her head pretty hard, since she couldn’t make out one word Kira had said.'Written for the Biweekly Prompt Challenge on discordThis weeks prompt was "Universal translator breaks during shuttle/away mission"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (I used [this](http://web.archive.org/web/20010823212520/http://home.t-online.de/home/DSteinle/BajLang/dicmain1.htm) Bajoran/English dictionary as a reference, compiled by the amazing [ TheTruthBetween ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTruthBetween/pseuds/TheTruthBetween), and took some liberties with the grammar.)

**Chapter 1**

Jadzia’s head was pounding. Lights danced behind her eyelids as she tried to come to her senses. She tried to open them, but they were too heavy, and the effort exhausted her. She smelled smoke. After a few minutes, she felt a hand grab her arm, and Kira was there, pressing a hypospray gently to her neck. Almost instantly, Jadzia felt her strength returning. Kira spoke urgently into her ear, wiping blood off her forehead, “Jadzia? Jadzia, ja’lat? Ekan’an hul. Aka’vo gyleya.”

Jadzia slowly blinked up at her._“Huh?”_ She guessed she must have hit her head pretty hard, since she couldn’t make out one word Kira had said. She looked around at the caved-in walls of the runabout, remembered Kira shouting ‘We have an engine failure!’ before everything went dark. She looked back up at Kira’s worried brown eyes.

“Ekan’an hul,” Kira repeated.

_“What? I can’t…what are you...?... are you speaking Bajoran?”_

Kira frowned at her. “Pen panyu’aka’no Trill?”

They sat staring at each other for half a second, then both their eyes widened as they realized what must have happened. Their universal translators had been damaged in the crash. Kira limped over to what was left of the pilot’s chair and began tapping away at the command console. Nothing. She tried hailing the computer, and when that didn’t work she even tried engaging the backup matrix manually. But there was no use, the entire system was fried. Kira smacked the console, then spit out an angry string of words which nobody would need a universal translator to understand.

_“Well. This is….not good.”_ Jadzia said. To herself, incidentally.

“Jadzia,” Kira turned to her and spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable of what she was saying. Still, Jadzia understood only two words in the sentence, and one of them was her name. She’d taken a Bajoran language course back when she received her assignment on Deep Space Nine, why couldn’t she remember anything more? Right now, she swore she could feel the spirit of her language tutor scowling down on her from somewhere far away.

She shook her head as she realized they were going to have to resort to hand gestures for now. Pulling herself off the floor of the runabout, she stood in front of Kira and pointed to the grassy field she could see outside the main viewscreen, then to the door of the runabout. They needed to find out where they’d landed. Kira nodded her understanding, and they both squeezed through the now-deformed exit of the tiny ship.

Outside, long blades of grass swayed in the wind and itched at their calves. The sky was a pale grey and, in the far distance, a wall of trees obscured the horizon. Kira squinted her eyes against the wind and looked around, but there wasn’t much else to see. She quickly ducked back into the ship and collected what few rations and medical supplies had survived the crash. It wasn’t enough to last more than a few hours, but Kira hoped they wouldn’t be here long enough to find out. Coming back outside, she looked at Jadzia and motioned for her to follow. There was no point in staying with the runabout, and the wind was starting to make them both shiver. Besides, the sky looked like it was getting ready to rain, and they wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of an open field if lightning struck.

By the time they made it to the treeline, they were both out of breath. Kira pulled a water ration out of her sack and they rested against a thick trunk, passing it between the two of them until it was empty.

They sat like that for a few moments, listening as the first set of raindrops drummed against the leaves above them. What little sunlight had filtered through the clouds earlier was long gone. It might have been peaceful, Jadzia thought, if it weren’t so cold.

“Dax?”

Kira placed her hand on Jadzia’s shoulder, then pointed to where Jadzia had hit her head and formed a question by raising her eyebrows.

_“Yeah. I’m okay,”_ Jadzia nodded, and gave a thumbs-up to make sure Kira understood._“You?” _She asked, pointing back at Kira, who shrugged and nodded.

Jadzia couldn’t come up with the right gestures to ask what she really meant. Kira looked tense. Like she was waiting for something. Jadzia knew Kira didn’t like sitting still, but there was something else too. She wondered if this was reminding Kira of the occupation; being tired, cold, not knowing what came next. There wasn’t time to dwell on that thought, as a blast of weapons fire echoed from deeper within the forest. Both women froze, their eyes wide as two more blasts followed in quick succession. Then, voices. They were faint, barely audible against the sound of discharging weapons, but they were there. Someone was barking orders in a language neither of them understood, but that they instantly recognized.

“Jem’Hadar,” they whispered simultaneously.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I used [this](http://web.archive.org/web/20010823212520/http://home.t-online.de/home/DSteinle/BajLang/dicmain1.htm) Bajoran/English dictionary as a reference, compiled by the amazing [ TheTruthBetween ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTruthBetween/pseuds/TheTruthBetween), and took some liberties with the grammar.)

**Chapter 2**

Kira helped Jadzia get to her feet, and they moved closer in the direction of the sound. The runabout couldn’t have crashed more than a few light years from Deep Space Nine; if the Jem’Hadar were this close to the station, time was running out faster than anybody had anticipated.

They walked in single file, with Kira in the front and Jadzia watching their backs with her phaser ready. Beyond a thick section of underbrush, the forest floor dipped into a shallow valley, not much bigger than a shuttle bay. Crouching down, they moved behind a fallen tree and peered into the gully.

Jadzia gasped. Dozens of Jem’Hadar soldiers marched about the valley below. Others were running laps around its perimeter, while still more were firing their disruptors at the trees along its edges. Looking closer, Jadzia pointed out a Vorta guardian watching the soldiers from under an awning, completely sheltered from the rain. His face would occasionally scrunch up as he watched the soldiers, and he bent his head to take notes on a padd. This was a training exercise.

“Aka’rokaya lem,” Kira tapped her side and pointed to the far end of the valley, where half a dozen Jem’Hadar shuttles were parked. Jadzia frowned back at her, not understanding. Kira pointed to the shuttles more forcefully, then made a motion with her hand like a ship flying away. Then, she moved her finger back and forth between the two of them, and Jadzia understood.

_“Kira!” _She yell-whispered, shaking her head vigorously. She spun her finger in a circle next to her head, trying to tell Kira she was crazy for even suggesting they could steal a Jem’Hadar ship. Maybe they had the element of surprise, but for all they knew, those shuttles might not even respond to their body signatures. What was Kira going to do, hotwire one of the damn things?

Kira gave her a look that said ‘do you have a better idea?’.

She didn’t.

Using the vegetation as a cover, they slunk their way around the fringe of the treeline, sliding down into the valley once they were close enough to make a run for the shuttles. As soon as they reached the nearest shuttle, Kira jumped into the pilot’s seat, followed by Jadzia in the rear. They had to do this fast. The soldiers would notice as soon as they powered up the engines, and this tiny shuttle wouldn’t be able to withstand more than a few close range hits.

Kira fumbled with the controls for a few moments, but soon they heard the buzz of the ship’s engines coming online. Rising into the sky, the shuttle shook with weapons fire from below and thunderclaps from above.

**§§§**

“Captain?”

“What is it, Chief?” Sisko asked, looking over to O’Brien’s console.

“There’s a ship approaching the station sir. It’s Jem’Hadar.”

“One ship?” Sisko raised his eyebrows, “Doesn’t sound like much of an attack fleet. Try hailing them.”

“They’re hailing _us_, sir.”

“On-screen.”

There was a beat as everyone in ops tried to register what they were seeing on the viewscreen. Kira and Dax, looking exhausted, uniforms covered in dirt, and piloting a Jem’Hadar shuttle.

“Major? Commander? What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s a long story, Benjamin,” Jadzia said.

“Isn’t it always,” Sisko sighed. “Chief, open up landing pad C, and send an extra security detail down there. Make sure they’re not changelings.”

“Aye, Captain,” O’Brien called from his station.

Sisko could feel today’s first headache coming on.


End file.
